Police: Man kills woman, then himself in front yard

Authorities say a 68-year-old man shot and killed a woman Sunday night before fatally shooting himself in the front yard of a home in rural Menifee.

Officers were sent to the home on Merritt Road to investigate a domestic disturbance shortly before 10 p.m. Before they arrived, however, dispatchers notified them that shots had been fired at the location, Menifee police Sgt. Jeff Buompensiero wrote in a news release.

Upon arriving at the home, which sits on a roughly 4-acre property along a dirt road, officers found a woman and man dead in the front yard in what investigators believe is a murder-suicide, the news release states.

Riverside County coroner’s officials identified the woman as 49-year-old Debra Vandyke. The man’s name had not been released pending notification of his next of kin.

Neighbors recalled hearing a series of gunshots around 10 p.m. in the rural neighborhood off Scott Road east of Interstate 215.

“I heard the pop, pop, pop,” said next-door neighbor Marc Miller, a former planning commissioner with the city. “There was maybe a two-minute pause and there was another pop. I came up the driveway and seen the sheriff’s lights coming right over the hill.”

Miller said his neighbors moved onto the property two months ago and often spent nights in an RV outside the home, which they were renovating. Miller said he wasn’t aware of any problems between the couple – whom he believed were married – until Sunday night’s gunfire startled him.

“It hasn’t really hit me yet,” Miller said. “All I can think about is how (they) loved the property. Next thing you know, they aren’t here anymore.”

Another neighbor, Mike Collins, said he had only exchanged friendly waves with the couple since they moved into a home across the street from his property.

Although he sometimes hears gunfire from neighboring ranchers likely shooting at chickens or coyotes, the three shots Collins said he heard Sunday night startled him enough to send him outside to investigate further.

That’s when Collins said he heard a fourth shot.

“I heard three gunshots in a row and a woman yell, ‘You shot her in the chest,’” Collins said. “I heard a guy moaning and then bam, the fourth gunshot. Right after that the police were there.”

Miller said Vandyke’s mother had been staying with the couple and answered the phone when Miller called over to the home. He said she kept him on the line when she told officers what transpired before the gunshots.

He said the man apparently had been staying in the RV at Pechanga.

“He came back yesterday and I guess she was mad at him or something and wanted him to leave,” Miller said. “She was telling him to leave for two or three hours and I guess she finally called the sheriff. … When she went outside to wait for the sheriff, he went outside and pulled the gun and shot her and went back inside and told her mother, ‘I just shot your daughter.’

“She went out to look and boom, he shot himself.”

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call investigators at 760-393-3500.